Verblonde

FWIW I never pick any skill on the basis of its AA/ASW effectiveness; I always pick on the basis of surface-to-surface utility, and if one or other boosts my AA/ASW, I won't lose any sleep over it. Our resident CV gods have demonstrated that the difference made to AA doesn't make a tangible difference to CV impact (good players laugh and point regardless, and bad ones are dinged by your AA anyway), and since - in DDs - attacking submarines when the opposition (if semi-competent) have LoS is suicide, why would I care if my ASW is boosted? Besides that, I actively avoid modes with submarines in, so any such skills are wasted anyway.

Depends what you want; my short answer would be Vampire II, and quite comfortably. The slightly longer answer is that if you want a DD that does the DD job well, but - almost by definition - doesn't do anything radically different to a regular DD, then you want Vampire II. The closest analogy is probably - if you have Haida - that she's like Haida at T10. The crawling smoke/hydro combination is pretty effective, and the dakka is decent; you only have the one torp launcher (and no heal), but single launch mitigates that somewhat. You're also pretty sneaky, which is helpful too. Druid and YOLO are both a bit more niche; one or other of them is probably worth picking if you want something different (although the release of the Italian DD line makes YOLO less unusual than she was, although she is still different to the silver equivalents), but - IMO - neither is much good at the 'traditional' DD role. They both can be good fun though, YOLO especially, although mine live in Coop most of the time; my skill-set isn't sufficient to avoid letting my team down much of the time when playing these two.

CVs aren't really my thing, so my memory may be flaky, but I have a recollection that the 'inactivity' warning for CVs gets triggered if you do zero damage; I *think* that moving your ship about may not be sufficient on its own. Can anyone who actually knows what they're talking about confirm/refute my hazy recollection?

This. More submarines being added to the game, when the existing ones haven't been remotely made into anything other than things that spoil the game for the majority, is about as desirable as experimental bowel surgery without anesthetic...

My feeling is that the basic functionality of the changes i.e. camo is purely aesthetic, is essentially good. What's been done with the bonuses is good too; for instance, the old permaflage bonus is now useful as you can stack it with one-use bonuses, and you only have to boost the element of the economy that you're actually interested in (xp, free xp, captain xp, or silver). I like pretty dresses, so I usually run cammo of some sort (although it's not irrelevant that I had lots of permaflage before the change, and I've kept some one-use ones too, so it isn't costing me silver); I'm seeing a lot of people who aren't though - it's going to be personal taste whether this is a good or bad thing. Personally, I don't really notice once battle is joined: I'm usually too busy trying not to balls-up to notice which ships have which dress on. Apart from some minor niggles, as I've said elsewhere, the only real mis-step - IMO - is what WG are charging for new dresses; since they went aesthetics-only, all permaflage after the first is stupidly over-priced. Also, for a suitable amount of doubloons, they should have allowed you to make a temporary cammo permanent. Obviously, the branch of Madam Olga's where the new offices are charges less than at the previous location...

I think others have covered off the 'how' most satisfactorily: you got citadelled. A lot. If you want to learn about the various game mechanics (and you should, unless you enjoy getting a tonking), a good place to start is the wiki: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/World_of_Warships Also, if you want to get a sense of any ship's armour layout in port, you can use the armour viewer: Depending on where you click, you can add/remove the bits of the armour that you're seeing. As an example, here's Shchors with some judiciously chosen parts enabled: That's the ship's citadel selected; note particularly where the top is, in relation to the waterline. The general 'text book' recipe for getting citadels is to aim at the waterline, centre of the ship; the above illustrates why Shchors is particularly easy to batter in this way (quite a few ships have far less vulnerable citadels though, and DDs don't have them at all).

Presumably, the initial ban was automated, and this was subsequently extended after a manual review (I assume your 'truth' was sufficiently offensive that someone was moved to make the effort to report it formally)...

This. @Ebusus if you want to quickly assess which lines cost what to research, this site is very helpful: https://wowsft.com/ (You want the 'Research XP' tab.) IMO if you're going to play any/all of the ships in whichever line you reset, it's sensible to look for a balance between fun and cost; I'm fortunate in that I'm a DD main, so the cheaper lines are also the ones I enjoy most. If you're going to do resets, it's a good idea to do the same line(s) over and over, rather than lots of different ones - this makes it easier to maintain a decent captain for each ship that you'll actually play (assuming you don't Free XP everything). For example, I have high teens to twenty-one pointers on all the IJN DDs (both lines) from T5 upwards, for this reason. The other thing to keep a weather eye on is any upcoming events/missions that might call for the ships in the line you're regrinding; rather obviously, you'll have to manage without your reset ships until you've researched and bought them again. This is another reason I usually reset the IJN DD lines: I have several premiums that can fill in the gaps (or some of them) whilst the silver ships are being re-ground.

FTFY. When you advocate for making something that is ruining the game for - probably - the bulk of the players even worse, are you really surprised when you get very little sympathy? Edit: and only after a mighty 280 battles played too?! Jayzus!

Not really; it's about threat, potential threat, and mitigating same. I don't care about the whole 'Pay to Rico' thing (beyond thinking that WG were unutterable 4rses for doing things that way), but I do care about identifying key threats on the opposing side, and always play to win - the latter requires neutralising threats is quickly and efficiently as possible. A PR played well is a massive danger; if you're not running mods, you have to assume a PR knows his business until proven otherwise, and sink them asap. If you play a ship that has the capacity to be highly influential, you have to expect opponents to take a disproportionate interest in you (believe me, I know - DD main).

Possibly true (I don't have her), but - with her long-burn radar and tankiness - she's a serious threat to anything on the opposing side that relies on stealth. I'll always ask my team to focus any PR that shows itself, but no more so than any decent radar cruiser.

Of course it's about making more money - everything WG does always is (as it should be - they're a commercial entity after all). That said, if you take the time to read and understand how the new system works, it's actually clearer than the old one was (I'm happy not to have to worry about how my regular xp boosters will impact free and captain xp for example, nor have to waste the former to boost the latter). Yeah, it's not 100% perfect yet, but it is an improvement. What your screen shot is telling you is: You have 232 +200% Commander XP boosters available (and 66 +100% too). *If* you wanted to buy more, they would cost you 24 doubloons apiece (this is exactly the same as the old system for things like standard eco flags, and certain cammo e.g. the old Type 59). If you run out of a booster, you won't automatically pay any doubloons (see the 'Auto-purchase' switch defaults to off); this is better than the previous system - the equivalent thing used to default to 'on'. There are plenty of times where, if WG were an ice-cream flavour, they'd be Pralines & Richard (and I'll be at the front of the queue to kick them for it), but this isn't one of them. The new system is cleaner and simpler to use/understand; we old lags just have to take a few minutes to understand the changes.

Nonsense! Credits: XP: (I broke up the largest value ones into smaller chunks, otherwise those would be available too). Incidentally, my stock of dragon flags etc. was pretty low before the rework. As others have said, if anything, the grind for new ships has got easier - you don't have to use XP boosters to get Free XP, and Captain XP any more.

I'm vaguely tempted, due to her being real (at least as much as GZ is, anyway, even if she didn't see action), but CVs for me are PvE-only things and this one doesn't really do anything unique, so she'll keep until she falls out of a Satan Box (if I'm still around at Xmas)...

As @Bear__Necessities alludes to, I don't think this is a power-creep thing, but rather a 'picking a bad fight' thing: YY is still an effective DD, but - like others - she has strengths and weaknesses, and one should generally try and pick fights where your strengths are played to as much as possible. Most DDs going one-on-one against a Ragnar are going to get sunk if the Ragnar can see you; this doesn't make Ragnar an all-conquering monster though, just a good DD hunter. Having played Ragnar, she has a few key weaknesses: no smoke (obviously), poor sneakiness (by DD standards), and nada torps; you need skill (more than I have) for all of those not to be an issue. On the other hand, her dakka is pretty fierce, she has a heal, plenty of hp, radar, and the super engine boost; if you can leverage that lot, you can take most DDs to the cleaners, *but* you're not much more than an HE spammer against fatter targets. So, if facing a Ragnar in most DDs, stay out of detection range, and rely on allies to sink her; if there are no allies to hand, bravely run away.

I'm a bit low on coal (got quite a few coal upgrades for recently acquired ships); I guess I'll pick up the T5 as a Satan Crate blocker - assuming submarines haven't made things intolerable by Xmas - and maybe the Spanish DD, although the latter doesn't really enthuse me due to being non-historical. Velos is actually interesting to me, but we don't know yet which resources she'll be available for.

Aye - October some time, if memory serves.

An extra detail to perhaps be aware of: the gun bloom is reset (I think) if the firing ship breaks visual contact before the end of the normal period of gun bloom. In practice this means, for example, you can fire (making you more visible) then move behind an island, which instantly returns your detection distance to normal (assuming no one has LoS to you), and then pop out again without the gun bloom in play. It also works with smoke, provided your smoke firing penalty isn't too severe.

My little brother and I found that Monopoly can be improved a lot if you're allowed to spend your money on things like Apache gunships etc...

Don't disappoint me, fellow forumites...

Presumably, to keep buffing them until enough idiots play them to avoid whoever's stupid idea they were in the first place getting fired?

I saw this as well, and just quietly swore to myself. And WG wonder why I spent the last couple of evenings re-acquainting myself with Skyrim (now, apparently, with shiny new birthday additions, not that I've found them yet)...

I suspect you may be playing at rather higher levels than I am; in the leagues I've been operating in, Lo Yang still holds up. She's basically Benson, with YOLO torps and a nasty vision-control trick; that's viable against non-expert opposition. It's also worth recalling that Lo Yang has rather better sneakiness than Z-23 (I assume that's the KM DD we'd be talking about?): 5.8 km versus 6.2 km.

If there are no CVs, I'll probably be thinking along the following lines: Cossacks, obviously. OG Harekaze (besides the obvious stuff, she now gets rather good permanent economic bonuses). Kidd for the sheer survivability. Orkan, although in Clans I expect the radar party piece to be less of a trump card than in Randoms; the heal is always useful though. Lo Yangs; the smoke/hydro combination is still pretty effective.

Of course there are, but the point - which I assume you're avoiding deliberately - is that we're talking about entertainment spend here; this is entirely discretionary and no-one has anything tangible to show for it afterwards, regardless of the form said entertainment takes. Ephemeral pixel ships are exactly the same in that regard as booze, trips to the cinema, clubbing, whatever.